The Polar Express (2004)
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The Polar Express Movie Review
The Polar Express is a 2004 animated fantasy adventure film directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Tom Hanks. It’s one of the director’s worst movies.
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“Seeing is believing, but sometimes the most real
things in the world are the things we can’t see“
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A young boy boards a train and embarks on an extraordinary journey to the North Pole to meet Santa Claus. His life takes a turn after he encounters special people that make his journey memorable. This film unfortunately did not stand the test of time at all. In fact, it only becomes more dated with each subsequent year. Ebert seemed to love it, but the majority of critics rightfully called it out for what it is, which is creepy and lifeless.
Zemeckis always loves to push the technology forward, but in this instance he tried to push it too hard, especially for the time. The result is a film that simply looks terrible. The computer animation was mixed with performance capture, but in a very awkward way where it fails at both. It tries to have its cake and eat it too, but in seeking to be both cartoony and lifelike, it only ended up being ugly. The characters in particular were horrendously designed, though the backgrounds admittedly fared better.
Tom Hanks plays way too many characters in this movie, which was an odd choice that of course did not work at all. His performance is fine and certainly not bad, but not one of those characters was memorable in any way. The characterization is beyond slight here, leading to the audience not caring for what would happen to these people. I certainly didn’t and it left me bored very quickly.
The Polar Express does have one terrific thing going for it and that is of course the soundtrack. The Oscar-nominated song Believe is gorgeously sung and beautifully written with such touching lyrics that hit you right in the feels. The overall score is incredible and Alan Silvestri really should have been nominated for his fantastic work here. The music is both timeless and enchanting.
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And the film has a couple of moments of genuinely inspired imagery and interesting plot points, but for the most part it just goes through the motions without ever being fully engaging or magical. It felt too lifeless and overly controlled to actually enchant viewers properly. It was a big failure for all those reasons and one of Zemeckis’ weakest efforts.
The Polar Express is one of the worst Robert Zemeckis movies. The soundtrack is incredible and a couple of sequences are quite inspired in their imagery, but for the most part this movie lacked real magic as it felt lifeless in its underdeveloped, creepy characters and sluggish in its pacing. The mixing of the performance capture with computer animation backfired spectacularly, resulting in one very ugly-looking feature.
My Rating – 2.5
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